this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023

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Did youtube give in already? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 year ago by commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I use youtube across different devices with the same account. sometimes, i even use it in multiple browser profiles or apps on the same device (with the account logged in).

the ad reminder got me. it actually stopped serving any youtube video on my laptop. so i made a new profile in firefox, logged in, and it was fine. for a couple days.

so i made a new profile, logged in, and... was foiled. but not to be deterred, i did what any reasonable person would do: i sought out one of the DOZENS of alternative frontends and used youtube's recommendation algorithm on the main site to pull videos from the alternative frontend.

for one day.

today, on my laptop, with my old profile, never changing logins or browser settings, youtube started working again.

did we win?

all 27 comments

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[–] BURN@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’d bet they’re A/B testing to see if it has a major impact on the amount an individual uses the site

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 4 points 1 year ago

100%.

[–] macisr@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I know that the pop up showing for some of my friends made me cancel my premium subscription. Everything else I don't know. If they stop i will think about getting it back, but newpipe has been working pretty nice. It has the same benefits as premium and I don't use youtube music. We'll see, thanks to youtube for making me go looking for alternatives i guess lol.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Out of curiosity, did they have an exit questionnaire or something where anyone doing that can let them know why they cancelled?

[–] macisr@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah, they show you a survey where you can pick some general reason and then there's a comment box at the end. I seriously doubt someone real goes through that but maybe they have a bot collecting keywords or something lol.

[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Same, I wouldn't have discovered FreeTube had they not fucked with my user experience. And since I can't comment/upvote or as far as they know, subscribe to anything they've lost all my engagement in addition to all the meta data they were collecting on me. How many seconds did I hover over each element before clicking something google? You don't fucking know now do you ya!?

[–] macisr@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Trueee, FreeTube in pc, NewPipe in android and you get the same experience as premium. Even more so, with FreetTube you even get sponsor block that i have no idea with what kind of black programming magic its done but it's a plus over premium. I sound like an ad but i didn't know that shit like that existed until I cancelled premium lol.

[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 year ago

What if I told you there's a fork called NewPipe+SponsorBlock on GitHub that does exactly what it sounds like?

[–] stown@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Does Google have no issues with ad blocking as long as you pay for YouTube premium? I have premium because it's included with my YouTube music subscription but I still use uBlock Origin in Firefox. I have never seen any requests for me to disable it while on YouTube or any other Google owned service.

[–] twoface_99@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have YouTube Premium and use the included ad-blocker of OperaGX. Never had that pop up and my YouTube runs like it always has.

I think once you pay for Premium they don't care anymore of you have an ad-blocker running.

[–] BlackHatMagic@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, both YouTube and the creators get way more money from you paying for premium than even watching hours of ads per day. Google demanding you disable ad block after you paid them would effectively amount to biting the hand that feeds them.

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Obviously, why would they discourage a paying customer?

[–] stown@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why make money off me once if they can make money off me twice.

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

because in such case they are risking making no money off you

[–] stown@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They will still be able to make money off selling my online profile and serving ads to me even if I block them....

[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 1 points 1 year ago

sure, but you could cancel your subscription

[–] nandeEbisu@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I use uBlock on Firefox and never got any kind of notification either. Not a paying customer.

[–] Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee 10 points 1 year ago

After I disabled all other adblocking related extensions besides uBlock, removed my custom rules and started updating the "quick fixes" filter list manually after every longer break from YouTube (+3 hours) I haven't had the popup since. Now I even have sponsor block and return dislikes enabled too and the popup still stays away.

[–] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago

They caused you a major inconvinience that is enough for a % of people to turn it off, even temporally. I doubt there would ever be an ideal anti-adblock, or that they even target those who would figure it out, but swing users who can be easily pressured into surrendering. The most popular channels aren't about tech things after all, and average session\video is probably small enough to bear ads while scrolling shorts for 10-15 minutes per sitting.

[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I am going to continue with the alternative frontends.

[–] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 4 points 1 year ago

Same. Ads aside, they simply work better than YouTube's garbage Web version. It's unusably slow on Firefox.

[–] ViscloReader@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

The ad reminder popup has a 1 day cool down (at least that's what I understood) so no, I think it will come back.

[–] wildcardology@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I use Opera GX exclusively for YouTube with its default ad blocker. Still working fine. My Firefox with ublock origin works fine as well. Never had the ad block page.

My wife's chrome with ublock origin still works with YouTube. But my kid got the ad block page on hers.

[–] SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org 3 points 1 year ago

Nah, it's still doing it to me.

[–] HerbalGamer@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

I had the same thing happen on my old laptop but not on my pc, oddly enough.